This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please
check with an FP administrator before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under
copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your
country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright
in your country, do not download or redistribute this file.

Title: They Can Only Hang You Once
Author: Hammett, Dashiell [Samuel Dashiell] (1894-1961)
Author [introductory description]: Anonymous
Date of first publication: 19 November 1932
Edition used as base for this ebook:
Collier's, 19 November 1932
[Springfield (Ohio) and New York: P. F. Collier & Son]
Date first posted: 20 December 2015
Date last updated: May 18, 2016
Faded Page ebook#20160527

This ebook was produced by Al Haines

Publisher's Note:

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.

They can only Hang you Once

By Dashiell Hammett

Detective Spade seeks an
interview and finds a mystery

SAMUEL SPADE said: "My name
is Ronald Ames. I want to see
Mr. Binnett—Mr. Timothy Binnett."

"Mr. Binnett is resting now, sir," the
butler replied hesitantly.

"Will you find out when I can see
him? It's important." Spade cleared
his throat. "I'm—uh—just back from
Australia, and it's about some of his
properties there."

The butler turned on his heel while
saying "I'll see, sir," and was going up
the front stairs before he had finished
speaking.

Spade made and lit a cigarette.

The butler came downstairs again.
"I'm sorry; he can't be disturbed now,
but Mr. Wallace Binnett—Mr. Timothy's
nephew—will see you."

Spade said, "Thanks," and followed
the butler upstairs.

Wallace Binnett was a slender,
handsome, dark man of about Spade's
age—thirty-eight—who rose smiling from a
brocaded chair, said, "How do you do,
Mr. Ames?" waved his hand at another
chair, and sat down again. "You're
from Australia?"

"Got in this morning."

"You're a business associate of Uncle Tim's?"

Spade smiled and shook his head.
"Hardly that, but I've some information
I think he ought to have—quick."

Wallace Binnett looked thoughtfully
at the floor, then up at Spade. "I'll do
my best to persuade him to see you,
Mr. Ames, but, frankly, I don't know."

Spade seemed mildly surprised. "Why?"

Binnett shrugged. "He's peculiar
sometimes. Understand, his mind seems
perfectly all right, but he has the
testiness and eccentricity of an old man in
ill health and—well—at times he can
be difficult."

Spade asked slowly: "He's already
refused to see me?"

"Yes."

Spade rose from his chair. His blond
satan's face was expressionless.

Binnett raised a hand quickly. "Wait,
wait," he said. "I'll do what I can to
make him change his mind. Perhaps
if—" His dark eyes suddenly became
wary. "You're not simply trying to sell
him something, are you?"

"No."

THE wary gleam went out of Binnett's
eyes. "Well, then, I think I can—"

A young woman came in crying
angrily, "Wally, that old fool has—" She
broke off with a hand to her breast when
she saw Spade.

Joyce Court uttered a short,
embarrassed laugh and said: "Please excuse
my whirlwind entrance." She was a
tall, blue-eyed, dark woman of twenty-four
or -five with good shoulders and a
strong, slim body. Her features made
up in warmth what they lacked in
regularity. She wore wide-legged blue satin
pajamas.

Binnett smiled good-naturedly at her
and asked: "Now what's all the excitement?"

Anger darkened her eyes again and
she started to speak. Then she looked
at Spade and said: "But we shouldn't
bore Mr. Ames with our stupid
domestic affairs. If—" She hesitated.

Spade bowed again. "Sure," he said,
"certainly."

"I won't be a minute," Binnett
promised, and left the room with her.

Spade went to the open doorway
through which they had vanished and,
standing just inside, listened. Their
footsteps became inaudible. Nothing
else could be heard. Spade was
standing there—his yellow-gray eyes
dreamy—when he heard the scream. It was
a woman's scream, high and shrill with
terror. Spade was through the
doorway when he heard the shot. It was
a pistol shot, magnified, reverberated by
walls and ceilings.

Twenty feet from the doorway Spade
found a staircase, and went up it three
steps at a time. He turned to the left.
Halfway down the hallway a woman
lay on her back on the floor.

JOYCE COURT stood behind him and
wrung her hands while tears streaked
her cheeks.

The woman on the floor resembled
Joyce Court but was older, and her face
had a hardness the younger one's had not.

"She's dead, she's been killed," Wallace
Binnett said incredulously, raising
his white face towards Spade. When
Binnett moved his head Spade could see
the round hole in the woman's tan dress
over her heart and the dark stain
which was rapidly spreading below it.

He turned swiftly.
Through an open
doorway he could see
an old man in white
pajamas lying sprawled
across a rumpled bed.
His head, a shoulder,
an arm dangled over
the edge of the bed.
His other hand held
his throat tightly. He
groaned again and his
eyelids twitched, but
did not open.

Spade lifted the old
man's head and
shoulders and put them up
on the pillows. The
old man groaned again
and took his hand
from his throat. His
throat was red with
half a dozen bruises.
He was a gaunt man
with a seamed face
that probably
exaggerated his age.

A glass of water
was on a table beside
the bed. Spade put
water on the old man's
face and, when the old
man's eyes twitched
again, leaned down
and growled softly: "Who did it?"

The twitching eyelids went up far
enough to show a narrow strip of
bloodshot gray eyes. The old man spoke
painfully, putting a hand to his throat
again: "A man—he—" He coughed.

Spade made an impatient grimace.
His lips almost touched the old man's
ear. "Where'd he go?" His voice was
urgent.

A gaunt hand moved weakly to indicate
the rear of the house and fell back
on the bed.

The butler and two frightened female
servants had joined Wallace Binnett
beside the dead woman in the hallway.

"Who did it?" Spade asked them.

They stared at him blankly.

"Somebody look after the old man,"
he growled, and went down the hallway.

At the end of the hallway was a rear
staircase. He descended two flights and
went through a pantry into the kitchen.
He saw nobody. The kitchen door was
shut but, when he tried it, not locked.
He crossed a narrow back yard to a gate
that was shut, not locked. He opened
the gate. There was nobody in the
narrow alley behind it.

He sighed, shut the gate, and returned
to the house.

SPADE sat comfortably slack in a deep
leather chair in a room that ran across
the front second story of Wallace
Binnett's house. There
were shelves of
books and the lights
were on. The
window showed outer
darkness weakly
diluted by a distant street lamp. Facing
Spade, Detective Sergeant Polhaus—a
big, carelessly shaven, florid man in dark
clothes that needed pressing—was
sprawled in another leather chair;
Lieutenant Dundy—smaller, compactly
built, square-faced—stood with legs
apart, head thrust a little forward, in
the center of the room.

Spade was saying: "... and the
doctor would only let me talk to the old
man a couple of minutes. We can try
it again when he's rested a little, but
it doesn't look like he knows much. He
was catching a nap and he woke up
with somebody's hands on his throat
dragging him around the bed. The best
he got was a one-eyed look at the fellow
choking him. A big fellow, he says,
with a soft hat pulled down over his
eyes, dark, needing a shave. Sounds
like Tom." Spade nodded at Polhaus.

The detective sergeant chuckled, but
Dundy said, "Go on," curtly.

SPADE grinned and went on: "He's
pretty far gone when he hears
Mrs. Binnett scream at the door. The hands
go away from his throat and he hears
the shot and just before passing out he
gets a flash of the big fellow heading
for the rear of the house and Mrs. Binnett
tumbling down on the hall floor. He
says he never saw the big fellow before."

"What size gun was it?" Dundy asked.

"Thirty-eight. Well, nobody in the
house is much more help. Nobody saw
anything. Wallace and his sister-in-law,
Joyce, were in her room, so they
say, and didn't see anything but the
dead woman when they ran out, though
they think they heard something that
could've been somebody running
downstairs—the back stairs.

"The butler—his name's Jarboe—was
in here when he heard the scream
and shot, so he says. Irene Kelly, the
maid, was down on the ground floor, so
she says. The cook, Margaret Finn,
was in her room—third floor back—and
didn't even hear anything, so she says.
She's deaf as a post, so everybody else
says. The back door and gate were
unlocked, but are supposed to be kept
locked, so everybody says. Nobody says
they were in or around the kitchen or
yard at the time." Spade spread his
hands in a gesture of finality. "That's
the crop."

Dundy shook his head. "Not exactly,"
he said. "How come you were here?"

"He's a San Francisco lawyer," Spade
said, "respectable and all that. A
couple of days ago he came to me with a
story about his uncle Timothy, a
miserly old skinflint, lousy with money and
pretty well broken up by hard living.
He was the black sheep of the family.
None of them had heard of him for
years. But six or eight months ago
he showed up in pretty bad shape every
way except financially—he seems to
have taken a lot of money out of
Australia—wanting to spend his last days
with his only living relatives, his
nephews Wallace and Ira.

"That was all right with them. 'Only
living relatives' meant 'only heirs' in
their language. But by and by the
nephews began to think it was better to
be an heir than to be one of a couple
of heirs—twice as good, in fact—and
started fiddling for the inside track with
the old man. At least, that's what Ira
told me about Wallace, and I wouldn't
be surprised if Wallace would say the
same thing about Ira, though Wallace
seems to be the harder up of the two.
Anyhow, the nephews fell out, and then
Uncle Tim, who had been staying at
Ira's, came over here. That was a
couple of months ago, and Ira hasn't seen
Uncle Tim since, and hasn't been able to
get in touch with him by phone or mail.

"That's what he wanted a private
detective about. He didn't think Uncle
Tim would come to any harm here—oh,
no, he went to a lot of trouble to make
that clear—but he thought maybe
undue pressure was being brought to bear
on the old boy, or he was being
hornswoggled somehow, and at least being
told lies about his loving nephew Ira.
He wanted to know what was what. I
waited until today, when a boat from
Australia docked, and came up here as
a Mr. Ames with some important
information for Uncle Tim about his
properties down there. All I wanted was
fifteen minutes alone with him." Spade
frowned thoughtfully. "Well, I didn't
get them. Wallace told me the old
man refused to see me. I don't know."

SUSPICION had deepened in Dundy's
cold blue eyes. "And where is this
Ira Binnett now?" he asked.

Spade's yellow-gray eyes were as
guileless as his voice. "I wish I knew. I
phoned his house and office and left
word for him to come right over, but
I'm afraid—"

Knuckles knocked sharply twice on
the other side of the room's one door.
The three men in the room turned to
face the door.

Dundy called, "Come in."

The door was opened by a sunburned
blond policeman whose left hand held
the right wrist of a plump man of
forty or forty-five in well-fitting gray
clothes. The policeman pushed the plump
man into the room. "Found him monkeying
with the kitchen door," he said.

Dundy addressed the policeman: "All
right. Good work. You can leave him."

The policeman moved a hand vaguely
towards his cap and went away,
shutting the door.

Dundy glowered at Ira Binnett and
demanded, "Well?"

Binnett looked from Dundy to
Spade. "Has something—"

Spade said: "Better tell him why
you were at the back door instead of
the front."

Ira Binnett suddenly blushed. He
cleared his throat in embarrassment.
He said: "I—uh—I should explain.
It wasn't my fault, of course, but when
Jarboe—he's the butler—phoned me
that Uncle Tim wanted to see me he
told me he'd leave the kitchen door
unlocked, so Wallace wouldn't have to
know I'd—"

"What'd he want to see you about?"
Dundy asked.

"I don't know. He didn't say. He
said it was very important."

"Didn't you get my message?"
Spade asked.

Ira Binnett's eyes widened. "No.
What was it? Has anything
happened? What is—"

Spade was moving towards the door.
"Go ahead," he said to Dundy. "I'll
be right back."

He shut the door carefully behind
him and went up to the third floor.

The butler Jarboe was on his knees
at Timothy Binnett's door with an eye
to the keyhole. On the floor beside him
was a tray holding an egg in an
egg-cup, toast, a pot of coffee,
china, silver, and a napkin.

Spade said: "Your toast's going
to get cold."

Jarboe, scrambling to his feet,
almost upsetting the coffeepot in
his haste, his face red and
sheepish, stammered: "I—er—beg your
pardon, sir. I wanted to make
sure Mr. Timothy was awake
before I took this in." He picked up
the tray. "I didn't want to
disturb his rest if—"

Spade, who had reached the
door, said, "Sure, sure," and bent
over to put his eye to the
keyhole. When he straightened up
he said in a mildly complaining
tone: "You can't see the bed—only
a chair and part of the window."

The butler replied quickly:
"Yes, sir, I found that out."

Spade laughed.

THE butler coughed, seemed
about to say something, but did
not. He hesitated, then knocked
lightly on the door.

A tired voice said, "Come in."

Spade asked quickly in a low
voice: "Where's Miss Court?"

"In her room, I think, sir, the
second door on the left," the butler
said.

The tired voice inside the room
said petulantly: "Well, come on in."

The butler opened the door and
went in. Through the door,
before the butler shut it, Spade
caught a glimpse of Timothy
Binnett propped up on pillows in his
bed.

Spade went to the second door
on the left and knocked. The door
was opened almost immediately
by Joyce Court. She stood in the
doorway, not smiling, not speaking.

He said: "Miss Court, when you
came into the room where I was
with your brother-in-law you said,
'Wally, that old fool has—' Meaning
Timothy?"

She stared at Spade for a moment.
Then: "Yes."

"Mind telling me what the rest
of the sentence would have been?"

She said slowly: "I don't know
who you really are or why you ask, but
I don't mind telling you. It would have
been 'sent for Ira.' Jarboe had just
told me."

"Thanks."

She shut the door before he had
turned away.

He returned to Timothy Binnett's
door and knocked on it.

"Who is it now?" the old man's voice
demanded.

Spade opened the door. The old man
was sitting up in bed.

Spade said: "This Jarboe was
peeping through your keyhole a few
minutes ago," and returned to the library.

IRA BINNETT, seated in the chair
Spade had occupied, was saying to
Dundy and Polhaus: "And Wallace got
caught in the crash, like most of us, but
he seems to have juggled accounts
trying to save himself. He was expelled
from the Stock Exchange."

Dundy waved a hand to indicate the
room and its furnishings. "Pretty
classy layout for a man that's busted."

Dundy said, "It's not enough." He
jerked a thumb at the door. "Show him
where to wait, Tom, and let's have the
widower in again."

Big Polhaus said, "Right," went out
with Ira Binnett, and returned with
Wallace Binnett, whose face was hard
and pale.

Dundy asked: "Has your uncle made
a will?"

"I don't know," Binnett replied.

Spade put the next question, softly:
"Did your wife?"

Binnett's mouth tightened in a mirthless
smile. He spoke deliberately: "I'm
going to say some things I'd rather not
have to say. My wife, properly, had no
money. When I got into financial
trouble some time ago I made some property
over to her, to save it. She turned it
into money without my knowing about
it till afterwards. She paid our
bills—our living expenses—out of it, but she
refused to return it to me and she
assured me that in no event—whether she
lived or died or we stayed together or
were divorced—would I ever be able
to get hold of a penny of it. I believed
her, and still do."

In darkness the three detectives
collided with one another going through
the doorway into the dark hall. Spade
reached the stairs first. There was a
clatter of footsteps below him, but
nothing could be seen until he reached a
bend in the stairs. Then enough light
came from the street through the open
front door to show the dark figure of
a man standing with his back to the
open door.

A flashlight clicked in Dundy's
hand—he was at Spade's heels—and threw
a glaring white beam of light on the
man's face. He was Ira Binnett. He
blinked in the light and pointed at
something on the floor in front of him.

Dundy turned the beam of his light
down on the floor. Jarboe lay there on
his face, bleeding from a bullet hole in
the back of his head.

"Inside the cellar door, under these
stairs," Wallace Binnett said. "What
is it?"

Polhaus pushed past Binnett towards
the cellar door.

Spade made an inarticulate sound in
his throat and, pushing Wallace
Binnett aside, sprang up the stairs. He
brushed past Joyce Court and went on,
heedless of her startled scream. He was
halfway up the stairs to the third floor
when the pistol went off up there.

He ran to Timothy Binnett's door.
The door was open. He went in.

Something hard and angular struck
him above his right ear, knocking him
across the room, bringing him down on
one knee. Something thumped and clattered
on the floor just outside the door.

The lights came on.

On the floor, in the center of the
room, Timothy Binnett lay on his back
bleeding from a bullet wound in his left
forearm. His pajama jacket was torn.
His eyes were shut.

Spade stood up and put a hand to his
head. He scowled at the old man on
the floor, at the room, at the black
automatic pistol lying on the hallway floor.
He said: "Come on, you old cutthroat.
Get up and sit on a chair and I'll see
if I can stop that bleeding till the
doctor gets here."

The man on the floor did not move.

There were footsteps in the hallway
and Dundy came in, followed by the two
younger Binnetts. Dundy's face was
dark and furious. "Kitchen door wide
open," he said in a choked voice. "They
run in and out like—"

"Forget it," Spade said. "Uncle Tim
is our meat." He paid no attention to
Wallace Binnett's gasp, to the incredulous
looks on Dundy's and Ira Binnett's
faces. "Come on, get up," he said to
the old man on the floor, "and tell us
what it was the butler saw when he
peeped through the keyhole."

The old man did not stir.

"He killed the butler because I told
him the butler had peeped," Spade
explained to Dundy. "I peeped, too, but
didn't see anything except that chair
and the window, though we'd made
enough racket by then to scare him back
to bed. Suppose you take the chair
apart while I go over the window." He
went to the window and began to
examine it carefully. He shook his head,
put a hand out behind him, and said:
"Give me the flashlight."

Dundy put the flashlight in his hand.

Spade raised the window and leaned
out, turning the light on the outside of
the building. Presently he grunted and
put his other hand out, tugging at a
brick a little below the sill. Presently
the brick came loose. He put it on the
window sill and stuck his hand into the
hole its removal had made. Out of the
opening, one at a time, he brought an
empty black pistol holster, a partially
filled box of cartridges, and an unsealed
manila envelope.

HOLDING these things in his hands,
he turned to face the others. Joyce
Court came in with a basin of water and
a roll of gauze and knelt beside
Timothy Binnett. Spade put the holster and
cartridges on a table and opened the
manila envelope. Inside were two sheets
of paper, covered on both sides with
boldly penciled writing. Spade read a
paragraph to himself, suddenly laughed,
and began at the beginning again,
reading aloud:

"'I, Timothy Kieran Binnett, being
sound of mind and body, do declare this
to be my last will and testament. To my
dear nephews, Ira Binnett and Wallace
Bourke Binnett, in recognition of the
loving kindness with which they have
received me into their homes and
attended my declining years, I give and
bequeath, share and share alike, all my
worldly possessions of whatever kind,
to wit, my carcass and the clothes I
stand in.

"'I bequeath them, furthermore, the
expense of my funeral and these
memories: First, the memory of their
credulity in believing that the fifteen years
I spent in Sing Sing were spent in
Australia; second, the memory of their
optimism in supposing that those fifteen
years had brought me great wealth, and
that if I lived on them, borrowed from
them, and never spent any of my own
money, it was because I was a miser
whose hoard they would inherit; and
not because I had no money except
what I shook them down for; third, for
their hopefulness in thinking that I
would leave either of them anything if
I had it; and, lastly, because their
painful lack of any decent sense of humor
will keep them from ever seeing how
funny this has all been. Signed and
sealed this—'"

Spade looked up to say: "There is no
date, but it's signed Timothy Kieran
Binnett with flourishes."

Ira Binnett was purple with anger,
Wallace's face was ghastly in its pallor
and his whole body was trembling.
Joyce Court had stopped working on
Timothy Binnett's arm.

The old man sat up and opened his
eyes. He looked at his nephews and
began to laugh. There was in his
laughter neither hysteria nor madness:
it was sane, hearty laughter, and
subsided slowly.

"I know nothing more about the first
one than I've told you," the old man
said, "and this one's not a killing, since
I'm only—"

Wallace Binnett, still trembling
violently, said painfully through his teeth:
"That's a lie. You killed Molly. Joyce
and I came out of her room when we
heard Molly scream, and heard the shot
and saw her fall out of your room, and
nobody came out afterwards."

The old man said calmly: "Well, I'll
tell you: it was an accident. They told
me there was a fellow from Australia
here to see me about some of my
properties there. I knew there was
something funny about that somewhere"—he
grinned—"not ever having been
there. I didn't know whether one of
my dear nephews was getting suspicious
and putting up a game on me or what,
but I knew that if Wally wasn't in on
it he'd certainly try to pump the
gentleman from Australia about me and
maybe I'd lose one of my free
boarding-houses." He chuckled.

"So I figured I'd get in touch with
Ira so I could go back to his house if
things worked out bad here, and I'd try
to get rid of this Australian. Wally's
always thought I'm half-cracked"—he
leered at his nephew—"and's afraid
they'll lug me off to a madhouse before
I could make a will in his favor, or
they'll break it if I do. You see, he's
got a pretty bad reputation, what with
that Stock Exchange trouble and all,
and he knows no court would appoint
him to handle my affairs if I went
screwy—not as long as I've got another
nephew"—he turned his leer on Ira—"who's
a respectable lawyer. So now I
know that rather than have me kick up
a row that might wind me up in the
madhouse, he'll chase this visitor, and I
put on a show for Molly, who happened
to be the nearest one to hand. She took
it too seriously, though.

"I had a gun and I did a lot of
raving about being spied on by my enemies
in Australia and that I was going down
and shoot this fellow. But she got too
excited and tried to take the gun away
from me, and the first thing I knew it
had gone off, and I had to make these
marks on my neck and think up that
story about the big dark man." He
looked contemptuously at Wallace. "I
didn't know he was covering me up.
Little as I thought of him, I never
thought he'd be low enough to cover up
his wife's murderer—even if he didn't
like her—just for the sake of money."

SPADE said: "Never mind that. Now
about the butler?"

"I don't know anything about the
butler," the old man replied, looking at
Spade with steady eyes.

Spade said: "You had to kill him
quick, before he had time to do or say
anything. So you slip down the back
stairs, open the kitchen door to fool
people, go to the front door, ring the
bell, shut the door, and hide in the
shadow of the cellar door under the
front steps. When Jarboe answered
the doorbell you shot him—the hole was
in the back of his head—pulled the
light switch, just inside the cellar door,
and ducked up the back stairs in the
dark and shot yourself carefully in the
arm. I got up there too soon for you;
so you smacked me with the gun,
chucked it through the door, and spread
yourself on the floor while I was
shaking pinwheels out of my noodle."

The old man sniffed again. "You're just—"

"Stop it," Spade said patiently. "Don't
let's argue. The first killing was an
accident—all right. The second couldn't
be. And it ought to be easy to show that
both bullets, and the one in your arm,
were fired from the same gun. What
difference does it make which killing we
can prove first-degree murder on? They
can only hang you once." He smiled
pleasantly. "And they will."